|
Soldiers Have ‘Duty To Refuse’ Hegseth’s Order To Commit War Crimes
My post on Trump’s war on Venezuela two days ago mentioned a Washington Post report (archived) about a war crime directly ordered by U.S. Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth:
The longer the U.S. surveillance aircraft followed the boat, the more confident intelligence analysts watching from command centers became that the 11 people on board were ferrying drugs.
Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth gave a spoken directive, according to two people with direct knowledge of the operation. “The order was to kill everybody,” one of them said.
A missile screamed off the Trinidad coast, striking the vessel and igniting a blaze from bow to stern. For minutes, commanders watched the boat burning on a live drone feed. As the smoke cleared, they got a jolt: Two survivors were clinging to the smoldering wreck.
The Special Operations commander overseeing the Sept. 2 attack — the opening salvo in the Trump administration’s war on suspected drug traffickers in the Western Hemisphere — ordered a second strike to comply with Hegseth’s instructions, two people familiar with the matter said. The two men were blown apart in the water.
The Intercept had previously reported (archived) the second strike the U.S. military had launched against survivors:
People on board the boat off the coast of Venezuela that the U.S. military destroyed last Tuesday were said to have survived an initial strike, according to two American officials familiar with the matter. They were then killed shortly after in a follow-up attack.
…
Last week, a high-ranking Pentagon official who spoke to the Intercept on the condition of anonymity said that the strike in the Caribbean was a criminal attack on civilians and said that the Trump administration paved the way for it by firing the top legal authorities of the Army and the Air Force earlier this year.
“The U.S. is now directly targeting civilians. Drug traffickers may be criminals but they aren’t combatants,” the War Department official said. “When Trump fired the military’s top lawyers the rest saw the writing on the wall, and instead of being a critical firebreak they are now a rubber stamp complicit in this crime.”
The high-ranking Pentagon official is correct in that the strikes against boats in international waters are criminal attacks on civilians.
But the killing of survivors of such strikes is more than that. It is undoubtedly a war crime.
Hegseth’s order to kill survivors was clearly illegal. It was the duty of the soldiers in the line of command to reject the order. That they have not done so but followed the order is in itself a war crime.
How do we know this?
Because the Department of Defense’s LAW OF WAR MANUAL (LOWM) (pdf) says so:
18.3 DUTIES OF INDIVIDUAL MEMBERS OF THE ARMED FORCES
Each member of the armed services has a duty to: (1) comply with the law of war in good faith; and (2) refuse to comply with clearly illegal orders to commit violations of the law of war.
Further down the Manual uses the exact case in question, an order to kill survivors at sea, as an example of an illegal order:
18.3.2 Refuse to Comply With Clearly Illegal Orders to Commit Law of War Violations.
Members of the armed forces must refuse to comply with clearly illegal orders to commit law of war violations. In addition, orders should not be construed to authorize implicitly violations of law of war.
18.3.2.1 Clearly Illegal Orders to Commit Law of War Violations.
The requirement to refuse to comply with orders to commit law of war violations applies to orders to perform conduct that is clearly illegal or orders that the subordinate knows, in fact, are illegal. For example, orders to fire upon the shipwrecked would be clearly illegal.27
Every soldier down the line of command, from the commanding general receiving Hegseth’s verbal order down to the guys who pushed the button to launch the missile had the duty to reject the order. Those who have not done so are themselves guilty.
The footnote in 18.3.2.1 points to the case of the Canadian hospital ship HMHS Llandovery Castle which on 27 June 1918 had been torpedoed by a German U-Boot:
The sinking was the deadliest Canadian naval disaster of the war. 234 doctors, nurses, members of the Canadian Army Medical Corps, soldiers and seamen died in the sinking and subsequent machine-gunning of lifeboats.
In 1921 a German court sentenced two officers to years in prison because they had followed the illegal order of the submarine’s captain, Helmut Brümmer-Patzig, to kill the survivors.
According to the footnote in the LoWM the court said:
“It is certainly to be urged in favor of the military subordinates, that they are under no obligation to question the order of their superior officer, and they can count upon its legality. But no such confidence can be held to exist, if such an order is universally known to everybody, including also the accused, to be without any doubt whatever against the law. This happens only in rare and exceptional cases. But this case was precisely one of them, for in the present instance, it was perfectly clear to the accused that killing defenceless people in the life-boats could be nothing else but a breach of the law. As naval officers by profession they were well aware, as the naval expert Saalwiachter has strikingly stated, that one is not legally authorized to kill defenceless people. They well knew that this was the case here. They quickly found out the facts by questioning the occupants in the boats when these were stopped. They could only have gathered, from the order given by Patzig, that he wished to make use of his subordinates to carry out a breach of the law. They should, therefore, have refused to obey.”
It can not be more clear. The DoD’s Law of Warfare manual is using the case of killing survivors at sea as an example of an illegal order. Today the court would say:
“They could only have gathered, from the order given by Hedseth, that he wished to make use of his subordinates to carry out a breach of the law. They should, therefore, have refused to obey.”
There are signs that one commanding officer did his duty and refused to execute Hegseth’s illegal order. On October 16 the U.S. military attacked another, the sixth, vessel. Two of the four people on board survived and were rescued:
President Trump said that the two survivors of a U.S. military strike Thursday on a vessel in the Caribbean Sea will be returned to their countries of origin.
…
One survivor is from Ecuador and the other is from Colombia.
Thursday’s strike marks the sixth known boat attack in the area since last month — and the first known attack with survivors. Mr. Trump said the strike was against a submarine carrying mostly fentanyl and other illegal narcotics.
…
A Navy helicopter transported the survivors from the semi-submersible to a Navy ship, a source familiar with the matter confirmed to CBS News on Friday.
“It is the custom of the sea to save people who are at risk in international waters. You don’t sort of sail on. That’s against every principle of naval activity,” Eugene R. Fidell, a senior research scholar at Yale Law School, told CBS News on Friday. “You’re supposed to save people, even though the people here are people who are only in danger because the U.S. was attempting to kill them.”
On the very same day those survivors were rescued, October 16, the DoD announced that the head of its Southern Command was ‘stepping down’:
The military commander overseeing the Pentagon’s escalating attacks against boats in the Caribbean Sea that the Trump administration says are smuggling drugs is stepping down, three U.S. officials said Thursday.
The officer, Adm. Alvin Holsey, is leaving his job as head of the U.S. Southern Command, which oversees all operations in Central and South America, even as the Pentagon has rapidly built up some 10,000 forces in the region in what it says is a major counterdrug and counterterrorism mission.
It was unclear why Holsey is leaving now, less than a year into his tenure, and in the midst of the biggest operation in his 37-year career. But one of the U.S. officials, all of whom spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss personnel matters, said that Holsey had raised concerns about the mission and the attacks on the alleged drug boats.
It now seems clear that Admiral Holsey got fired for not following Hegseth’s illegal order and for ordering the rescue of the survivors of the strike.
Hegseth meanwhile reveals himself as veritable psychopath:
Pete Hegseth @PeteHegseth – 0:37 UTC · Dec 1, 2025
For your Christmas wish list…
@U.S. Southern Command
There are signs that Congress is waking up to the issue (archived) and that Hegseth’s order may well have real consequences for him:
A top Republican and Democrats in Congress suggested on Sunday that American military officials might have committed a war crime in President Trump’s offensive against boats in the Caribbean after a news report said that during one such attack, a follow-up strike was ordered to kill survivors.
…
The lawmakers’ comments came after top Republicans and Democrats on the two congressional committees overseeing the Pentagon vowed over the weekend to increase their scrutiny of U.S. boat strikes in the Caribbean after the report. Mr. Turner said the [Washington Post] article had only sharpened lawmakers’ already grave questions about the operation.
The senators and member of congress should grow a spine and use their power over the budget to reign in the president. The secretary of defense must be fired from his position. Admiral Holsey must be reinstate as Southern Command.
Posted by: dan of steele | Dec 2 2025 16:18 utc | 395
By the time I realized what I had done I had decided to just go along with it
Well, you weren’t alone. I asked GROK. A grand total of 7 U.S. military and civilian officials resigned in direct protest to these wars.
Resignations in Protest to U.S. “Illegal Wars”
The phrase “illegal wars” often refers to the U.S.-led invasions and occupations of Iraq (2003–2011) and Afghanistan (2001–2021), which critics (including many of the resignees themselves) have labeled as violations of international law due to the absence of explicit UN Security Council authorization, reliance on disputed intelligence (e.g., Iraq’s alleged weapons of mass destruction), and disproportionate civilian impacts. Resignations in protest were rare but notable, primarily from U.S. State Department diplomats and a few military officers. These acts were public statements of dissent, often via open letters to the Secretary of State or Defense.
Based on historical records, at least 7 U.S. military and civilian officials resigned in direct protest to these wars. This count focuses on confirmed, high-profile cases where the resignation was explicitly tied to opposition to the wars’ legality, strategy, or conduct. Broader criticism (e.g., post-retirement calls for resignations by 6 generals in 2006 over Iraq handling) is not included, as it did not involve active-duty resignations. Below is a breakdown:
Key Resignations by War
War
Official
Role
Date
Reason Summary
Iraq (2003 Invasion)
Lt. Gen. Gregory S. Newbold
Marine Corps, top operations officer at U.S. Central Command
March 2002 (pre-invasion)
Resigned in protest to Donald Rumsfeld’s flawed invasion plans, citing inadequate preparation and distortion of intelligence; later wrote publicly that the war was a “strategic blunder.”
Iraq
John Brady Kiesling
State Department Political Counselor (Athens Embassy)
February 27, 2003
Public letter in The New York Times decrying the war as a betrayal of U.S. values and international law, driven by “systematic distortion of intelligence” akin to Vietnam.
Iraq
Joseph C. Wilson IV
Former Ambassador and State Department Senior Advisor
February 13, 2003
Resigned from Foreign Service to publicly challenge Bush administration claims of Iraqi uranium purchases from Niger, calling the war unjustified and based on lies.
Iraq
John H. Brown
State Department Cultural Officer (22 years service)
March 10, 2003
Resigned citing inability to support Bush’s “war plans against Iraq,” emphasizing damage to U.S. global legitimacy and echoing Vietnam-era dissent channels.
Iraq
Ann Wright
State Department Colonel (Army Reserves) and Diplomat (15 years service, reopened Kabul Embassy)
March 19, 2003
Public resignation letter to Colin Powell protesting the unilateral invasion’s violation of UN processes and neglect of Afghanistan reconstruction; called it a “blasphemy against the rule of law.”
Afghanistan (2009 Escalation)
Matthew Hoh
State Department Senior Civilian Adviser (Zabul Province); former Marine Captain (Iraq veteran)
September 2009
First known U.S. official to resign over Afghanistan; letter criticized the surge strategy as fueling the Taliban insurgency, questioning the war’s purpose and endgame after 8 years.
Context and Analysis
- Total Breakdown: 1 military officer (Newbold) + 5 civilian officials (4 diplomats, 1 hybrid military-diplomat). All were U.S. government employees at the time.
- Why So Few? U.S. civil-military norms discourage resignations in protest, viewing them as “political acts” that undermine chain of command. Most dissent occurred via internal “dissent channels” (established post-Vietnam) or post-retirement. For instance, Time magazine reported in 2003 that up to 1 in 3 senior officers privately questioned the Iraq invasion, but few acted publicly.
- Impact: These resignations garnered media attention (e.g., Wright and Kiesling’s letters were widely published) and inspired anti-war activism, but did not alter policy. They highlighted internal rifts, with Wright later noting the wars’ focus shifted resources from Afghanistan to Iraq prematurely.
- Broader Dissent: Over 50 countries and religious leaders condemned the wars, but U.S. internal protests were limited. No mass resignations occurred, unlike in the UK (3 ministers quit over Iraq).
This tally is conservative; unpublicized or lower-level resignations may exist but lack documentation. For comparison, recent U.S. support for Israel’s Gaza operations (2023–ongoing) has seen ~12 public resignations as of mid-2024, showing evolving norms for protest.
Posted by: john | Dec 2 2025 17:08 utc | 394
Marxism – The Enemy Within – Democratic Socialism Is A Lie
.
Democratic socialism is a contradiction in terms, it is a combination of two words that contradict each other.
Democracy and socialism, as socialism is currently known cannot go together, because the one cancels the other.
Because democracy gets destroyed in the very process of bringing socialism, this so-called socialism cannot be brought in without murdering democracy.
It is necessary to understand why democracy will have to go for socialism to come.
The first principle, the foundational principle of democracy is that it gives every individual person the freedom to live, to work, to earn, to produce and to own, use property and amass wealth from ones own production.
It is one of the basic rights.
The next fundamental principle of democracy ordains that there should be no injustice to anyone.
Another basic principle of democracy says that the majority cannot subject the minority to any injustices.
Democracy means that even if there is a minority of one, the majority cannot subject it to injustices, and deprive it of any of its basic rights.
If the majority, whom the so-called socialism claims to speak and work for, uses democracy to destroy this minority, then it knocks out the very foundation of democracy.
And minorities change with time, today one group is in the minority, tomorrow another may take its place.
Now socialists say that wealth should be distributed, someone should not have more and others less, because wealth creates jealousy and bitterness.
But it is necessary to ask if it is justice that those who did not do a thing to produce wealth, who took no part whatsoever in its creation, who were just spectators, should now, when wealth is created, come forward and demand its distribution.
A handful of people have created wealth, but after it has been created, all those who have had no hand in its creation are claimants for a share in its ownership.
But this is not what democracy means.
Democracy means that the producers own their produce.
And if anyone distributes it, shares it with others, it is their pleasure.
Wealth is a creation of intelligence and talent.
Today socialists envy that intelligence, and say that wealth should be distributed equally.
In the same way, tomorrow we will say that we cannot tolerate that some people have beautiful partners while others have ugly ones.
We will say that this is inequality, it cannot be tolerated; everyone should have equal rights to beautiful partners.
We will not be wrong if we say that, because by the same logic, there is no difference at all.
And then the day after we will say that it is intolerable that a handful of people are intelligent while others are stupid.
That this too is inequality, we demand equal distribution of intelligence and talent.
It is the same logic that demands equal distribution of wealth.
But this whole approach is anti-democratic.
In fact, every person is different and unique.
Every person is born with distinct and different potentialities, and they will seek and develop their own potentialities, and they will create what they are born to create.
And as such they will own their creation.
And if they share it with others, they do so for their own joy.
We have no right to claim it, it would be grossly unjust.
Socialism, however, approves of many such injustices, because it is easy to win the majority in support of injustices.
But injustice will not become justice and a lie will not become truth just because the majority supports them.
Freedom to own private property is one of the fundamental human rights, and democracy accepts this right of the individual.
So when somebody says that socialism with democracy is possible, it is an outright lie.
Socialism violates the basic principle of democracy.
Democracy and socialism cannot go together.
The second thing is that socialism only talks of the great values, which make for the basis of its philosophy, but it cannot achieve them.
So it will be worthwhile if we go into some of these values at length.
Freedom is perhaps the greatest value in an individuals life.
There is no greater value than this, because freedom is foundational to the whole development of humanity.
That is why bondage or slavery is the worst state of human existence and freedom is its best and most beautiful.
Socialism cannot be established without fighting and finishing freedom.
It is, of course, possible that the majority may consent to destroy the freedom of the minority.
But still it is unfair and unjust.
Destruction of freedom can never be democratic.
Freedom of thought is the very life of democracy, it is its very soul.
But socialism cannot stand freedom of thought, because freedom of thought includes the freedom to support capitalism.
It is difficult for socialism to swallow that.
Socialism wants to destroy capitalism totally, and therefore it has to destroy freedom of thought.
And it is unthinkable how, after destroying the right of the individual to hold property and his freedom of thought, socialism can be considered democratic!
Let it be clearly understood that democracy is a value that goes with capitalism, and not with socialism.
And if democracy has to live, it can only live with capitalism, it cannot live with socialism.
Democracy is an inalienable part of the capitalist way of life, and as such it can only go with capitalism.
Similarly there are other values, we are not even aware of, which can be destroyed easily.
And they are already being destroyed.
The individual has the ultimate value.
But in the eyes of socialism it is not the individual but the collective, the crowd, that has value.
And socialism accepts that the individual can be sacrificed for the collective, the society.
The individual, in fact, has always been sacrificed in the name of great principles, and for the sake of big and high-sounding names.
They have been sacrificed sometimes for the sake of the nation and sometimes for the sake of religion.
But humanity refuses to learn from history.
When old altars disappear, they create new ones, and continues sacrificing the individual.
Democratic socialism is such a new altar.
If man has to learn anything from his history, the one lesson that is worth learning is this.
The individual cannot be sacrificed for anything.
Even the greatest of nations does not have the right to ask for the sacrifice of a single individual.
Even the greatest of humanity does not have the right to sacrifice the individual for its sake, because the individual is a living consciousness, and it is dangerous to sacrifice this living consciousness at the altar of a system or an organization, however great it be, because the system is a lifeless arrangement, a dead entity, and it is not proper to sacrifice a living person for the sake of a dead system.
But we have gotten into the habit of killing the individual, and even now we are seeking new avenues, new altars at which the individual can be sacrificed.
The new altar is democratic socialism.
Politicians – Enemy Of The People
.Socialism is not democratic.
The socialism that is sought to be forced on us can never be democratic.
In only one way can socialism come without sacrificing freedom, and that is when it comes effortlessly, naturally and by itself.
In a very wealthy country with a small population.
Otherwise it is not possible for socialism to be democratic.
Sooner or later labor will increasingly become a non-essential factor in the production of goods.
Labor has a hand in the creation of wealth, but it has not been the central factor, the basic factor of production.
It does not play a pivotal role.
The basic factor, the pivotal factor is intelligence and talent.
It is an individuals intelligence that has discovered new dimensions of creating wealth.
As it is today, the capitalist system is far from adequate.
The system as it is needs to be tremendously improved and developed.
But the hysterical socialist war cry is coming very much in the way of its growth, and will not allow any growth if it has its way.
Soon millions of people will be out of work due to A.I. and robotic automation.
What will happen with the huge wealth that the automatic machines will produce?
The pattern of taxation will have to be radically altered.
Corporations using A.I. and robotic automation who produce more should pay higher tax rates than individuals producing on a much smaller scale.
Which could bring in zero taxation on human labour at some point.
Then alone, wealth, abundant wealth, can be created.
Although it is very interesting to note that a great majority of mankind is wholly uncreative.
This majority is content with just eating, working and being immersed online on social media.
Only a very small fraction of humanity has engaged itself in creativity and produced great results.
Take any field, be it poetry or great painting, production of wealth, science or spirituality, only a handful of men and women have attained to peaks of creativity.
Capitalism is an instrument for converting labour into wealth and if capitalism is allowed to grow unimpeded it can find ways to convert labour into wealth but the socialists want to hand over everything, the means of production and labour, to the state.
The irony is that the politicians are, and have always been, the most inefficient and worthless class of people in the world.
There is a reason for this.
It is that merit is valued in every walk of human life except in politics.
In politics alone merit has no value at all.
A person who has no qualifications whatsoever, enters politics.
Politics does not ask for any particular qualifications or specialized knowledge on the part of those who want to enter its arena.
It is a strange profession, which calls for nothing except that you can shout slogans and get some followers behind you.
Politics, which is the haven of criminals, psychopaths and narcissists, says that trade, commerce, industries, including all means of production, should be put in the hands of the state, which is another name for the politician.
So the politicians will manage and control the economic life of the country.
My vision is different.
It is that the politician can be prevented from ruining the human societies of the world if he is prevented from directly controlling the government and the administration of the state.
What we have at the moment is mobocracy, it is certainly not democracy.
It is all right for the people to choose their representatives who have merit for parliament, and it should be their clearly defined task to find only the best people of merit to administer the various divisions and functions of the government.
They have to see to it that the selected ministers are fully qualified for their different jobs.
Then we will have meritocracy in the place of the mobocracy that we have now.
Unless democracy merges into meritocracy, countries will remain in the hands of ignorant, stupid politicians.
And until democracy is allied with meritocracy, democracy will continue to be the instrument of the downfall of humanity and its degradation, it can never be the instrument of its upliftment and glory.
The state, which is in the hands of the most incompetent, and unskilled people, will continue to ruin all the countries of the world.
Politicians want to monopolize everything and they want all power for themselves.
Besides political power, they want to monopolize economic power too.
They want trade and industries and everything in their hands.
Even science and religion are not spared, they want everything under the sun.
But if we allow this to happen, danger is guaranteed.
That is why I place this idea of meritocracy before you.
Meritocracy is not opposed to democracy, meritocracy is a concept of working through democracy.
Without the need of politicians or political parties.
And sooner or later, with the growth of understanding, intelligent specialists are going to be significant in the whole world.
When everything is in the hands of fully conscious and guiding experts of their specialty fields, only then will the peoples confidence and trust be returned to these shores…
Posted by: Jonathan Rotten | Dec 2 2025 21:00 utc | 397
|
